Evaluation Engineering - 34

TECHNOLOGY INSIGHTS

INNOVATIONS

DRIVE WEARABLES
MARKET
By Ken Cormier, Managing Editor

Wearable electronics worn by consumers often include health and fitness
tracking devices, but also watches, jewelry,
clothing, implantable devices and headmounted displays. The medical world is
no lightweight in this area, employing
smart patches, smart pills, and other wearables for the treatment of chronic diseases
and remote telemedicine.
Here are some news updates on developments in wearables.

Report: Wearables market
$61.4 billion by 2025
The global market for wearable electronics
is predicted to hit $61.4 billion by 2025,
according to a report by ReportLinker.
Expected driving forces will be "inexpensive sensors, miniaturized yet powerful
microchips and processors, low-power,
lighter electric components, and the
expansion of applications addressed by
wearable products and services," the report says. The greatest impact on industry
growth will be in medical electronic wearables, which will enhance digital medical
telehealth, according to the report.1

Fish scales could make wearable
electronics more sustainable
New research in the American Chemical
Society's ACS Nano describes a method
to create electronic displays such as a
glowing tattoo or a digital readout on
human skin-using fish scales. Up to
now, electricity-conducting and lightemitting components have been layered
onto transparent plastic film, to make
them flexible enough to stay on skin or
other soft surfaces. The ACS Nano article
describes how to make such displays,

EVALUATION ENGINEERING MAY/JUNE 2020

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which would likely be disposable after one use. Researchers Hai-Dong Yu,
Juaing Liu, Wei Huang and colleages
settled on a gelatin derived from collagen found in fish scales, which was fashioned into a film. An attractive aspect of
the film is that it is unlikely to linger in
landfills after use, as it dissolves within
seconds when immersed in hot water.
When buried in soil, it degrades within
24 days. The researchers built a working AC electronluminescent device that
continued to glow, even after being bent
and relaxed 1,000 times. 2

Ford tests buzzing wristbands
for social distancing
Maybe the production lines aren't churning out vehicles at Ford Motor Company,
but the auto giant is getting ready for renewed activity on wheeled products when
the COVID-19 threat diminishes.
At a Ford factory in Plymouth, MI, a
dozen workers are testing watch-like
wearables that vibrate when workers
come within 6 feet of each other. The object is to keep workers outside the distance recommended by health experts to
avoid spreading the coronavirus.
The social-distancing gizmo could be
part of new Ford safety protocols, developed in cooperation with the UAW, when
it resumes production as soon as next
month, following a six-week shutdown.
Also under consideration is thermal imaging scanning to detect fevers.
The smartwatches, manufactured by
Samsung Electronics Co., and using software from Austin-based Radiant RFID,
use Bluetooth short-wave and low-power
technology. 3

Stretchable supercapacitors
A novel supercapacitor that remains
functional even when stretched to eight
times its original size has been developed
by researchers at Duke University and
Michigan State University. It reportedly
doesn't exhibit ill effects from repeated
stretching, and maintains all but a few
percentage points of energy performance
after 10,000 cycles of charging and discharging. The researchers anticipate the
supercapacitors being used as part of a
power-independent, stretchable, flexible
electronic system that could be used in
wearables and biomedical devices.
To create the supercapacitors, the team
grew a carbon nanotube "forest" on top of
a silicon wafer, and coated a thin layer of
gold nanofilm on top of it. A coat of gold
nanofilm was applied to the forest, which
was then transferred to a prestretched
elastomer substrate. The gel-filled electrode was allowed to relax, which crumpled the gold layer and condensed the forest. When the resulting dense forest was
filled with a gel electrolyte, it was able to
trap electrons on the surface of the nanotubes. When two of these final electrodes
were sandwiched close together, voltage
could be loaded onto one side with electrons while the other was drained.4
REFERENCES

1. ReportLinker "Global Wearable Electronics
Industry," December 2019
2. ACS Nano, "Fish scales could make wearable
electronics more Sustainable," March 18,
2020
3. Bloomberg, "Ford Tests Buzzing Wristbands to
Keep Workers at Safe Distances," April 15, 2020
4. Pratt School of Engineering, "Stretchable
superconductors to power Tomorrow's
Wearable Devices," March 19, 2020

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